The devils plan to send the patient church shopping!
S4E32: “Let’s go to the mall!” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:08 – Welcome
00:35 – Chit-Chat
01:42 – Song-of-the-week
03:02 – Quote-of-the-week
03:43 – Drink-of-the-week
06:46 – Patreon Toast
10:39 – Chapter Summary
12:03 – Discussion
45:38 – Unscrewing Screwtape
51:11 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
Chit Chat
- Andrew was celebrating his new Pints With Jack t-shirt. Both Matt and I received a copy of 7th Edition of Michael Jackson’s Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch from Andrew for Christmas and he received a pen-and-ink drawing of Lewis:
Song-of-the-week
- Since today’s letter is all about church shopping, the song-of-the-week was “Let’s go to the mall!” by Robin Sparkles, a Canadian teen pope idol from the TV show, How I met your mother:
The alternative song-of-the-weeks were A Change will do you Good by Sheryl Crow and I get around by the Beach Boys.
Quote-of-the-week
“Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #16)
Drink-of-the-week
- For the drink-of-the-week, Matt was drinking Singleton of Duffton (12 Year)
- Color: Golden Honey
- Nose: Sweet with underlying Malt
- Body: Supple Palate: Rich with orchard fruit, malt, and spice
- Finish: Medium to long; warm and spicy with slowly fading notes of sherry / soft fruit and fudge
- Andrew was drinking Clynelish 14.
- Tasting Notes: “A delightfully complex spicy and perfumed nose, with some floral and malty hints. The palate is multi-layered too, with some slight citrus hints on a honey background with peat and delicious spices before a honey finish with a trace of brine”.
- Andrew mentioned that he recently went out for a drink with Dale from A Pilgrim Faith podcast.
Patreon Toast
- Finally, we toast one of our Gold-level Patreon supporters. Today we are toasting Jim Owens:
Jim, may your disposition be open to both seeking and receiving Truth as it is and may the Truth transform you from the inside out!
Patreon Toast for Jim Owens
- Andrew mentioned this quotation from An experiment in criticism:
My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.
C.S. Lewis, An experiment in criticism
…as well as this passage from Surprised By Joy about Jack’s childhood friend, Arthur Greeves:
The very qualities which had previously deterred me from such books Arthur taught me to see as their charm. What I would have called their “stodginess” or “ordinariness” he called “Homeliness”–a key word in his imagination. He did not mean merely Domesticity, though that came into it. He meant the rooted quality which attaches them to all our simple experiences, to weather, food, the family, the neighbourhood. He could get endless enjoyment out of the opening sentence of Jane Eyre, or that other opening sentence in one of Hans Andersen’s stories, “How it did rain, to be sure.” The mere word “beck” in the Brontës was a feast to him; and so were the schoolroom and kitchen scenes. This love of the “Homely” was not confined to literature; he looked for it in out-of-door scenes as well and taught me to do the same.
C.S. Lewis, Surpised By Joy (Chapter 10)
- Matt mentioned an upcoming interview with Chris Armstrong.
Chapter Summary
- Matt and Andrew didn’t update my spreadsheet to let me know that they had arranged a time to record this episode, which meant that I hadn’t converted my notes into a polished 100-word summary, so Matt did it on the fly (and went over the 100 word summary):
Screwtape begins with frustration, for finding out the patient has not only faithfully attended church but one specific church. But never fear, Screwtape! If we can’t cure him of church going, he says the next best thing is to create a church connoisseur. On the one hand, this creates the opportunity for church to become a type of club. On the other hand, it also turns him into a critic and prevents him from being receptive to God’s Truth.
Screwtape then analyzes some local prospects… The first church, the pastor has watered down christianity significantly. The second church, the pastor, due to inner negativity, is a constant contrarian and he even says dishonest . But most importantly, both churches are “party churches”.
A not-quite-one-hundred-word-summary of Chapter 16
Finally, Screwtape suggests, when he’s at church, make him major on the minors, make him frustrated at who calls it Mass or Holy Communion, yet neither has much knowledge on the difference between the two.
Discussion
- Andrew explained that the main point of this letter is to get the patient distracted. He alluded to this section from Letters To Malcolm:
Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, “What on earth is he up to now?” will intrude. It lays one’s devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, “I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.”
C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm (Letter #1)
Matt connected this to personal prayer life and they had a discussion about “set prayers”, extemporaneous prayer, beads etc. Andrew mentioned the prayer of silence:
When the golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift? But He does not give it–anyway not to me–day in, day out. My mistake was what Pascal, if I remember rightly, calls “Error of Stoicism”: thinking we can do always what we can do sometimes.
C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm (Letter #2)
Church Connoisseur
- Screwtape is shocked to find that the patient has been faithful to his parish:
Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
- Screwtape doesn’t like it when churches bring people together of different backgrounds, ages etc. He wants church to become a club.
- Matt tried to reference to Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, The Preacher To The Papal Household, but he couldn’t remember his name. Fr. Cantalamessa would often quote St. John-Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, Ut Unum Sint, where the Pope quoted his predecessor, St. Pope John XXIII, who said that
“What unites us is much greater than what divides us.”
St. Pope John XXIII
Andrew quoted the Preface to Mere Christianity:
Certainly I have met with little of the fabled odium theologicum from convinced members of communions different from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people whether within the Church of England or without it: men not exactly obedient to any communion… It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell… there is something, or a Someone… speaks with the same voice.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Preface)
Dangers of Church Shopping
- Screwtape speaks about the dangerous of the patient being open:
…but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going. (You see how grovelling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!) This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it is received in this temper
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
- Screwtape then begins looking at the different churches in the patient’s neighbourhood…
Prospective Church #1
- The first church has a very watered-down Christianity:
At the first of these the Vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for a supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa… We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture. But perhaps your patient is not quite silly enough for this church — or not yet?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
Prospective Church #2
- The second church is all over the place!
“Why [Father Spike] is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism — one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny human reason altogether — one day immersed in politics, and, the day after, declaring that all states of this world are equally “under judgment”.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
Matt puzzled over the word “Maritain” in the follow quotation, which I believe is a reference to Jacques Maritain. This is confirmed by checking with Andrew’s suggestion, Lewisiana.nl.
There is also a promising streak of dishonesty in him; we are teaching him to say “The teaching of the Church is” when he really means “I’m almost sure I read recently in Maritain or someone of that sort”.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
- Andrew admitted that The Great Divorce is Lewis’ best work (well, not really, but I think that was the subtext).
Party Churches
Screwtape is a big fan of what he calls “party churches” (which isn’t quite as fun as it sounds):
I think I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. And it isn’t the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say “mass” and those who say “holy communion” when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent things — candles and clothes and what not — are an admirable ground for our activities.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
Andrew shared about “The Surplice Wars”.
- Screwtape would expect Christians to notice the applicability of St. Paul’s teaching about food sacrificed to idols, whereby Christians would prefer to deny themselves than scandalize a fellow Christian:
“…the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the “low” churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his “high” brother should be moved to irreverence, and the “high” one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his “low” brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 16)
- Genuflecting is a kind of kneeling.
- Matt referred to listening to The Litany of Humility on the Hallow App.
- Andrew quoted the final part of Mere Christianity:
Out of ourselves, into Christ, we must go
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 11)
…and The Weight of Glory:
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Unscrewing Screwtape
- Do think less of yourself and more of others
- Do be loving towards those you love, as well as those you don’t particularly like!
- Do seek truth and be receptive to it
- Do pray for your pastors before they preach
- Do tell your pastor if he said something in particular which touched or challenged you
- Do not “church shop” based on the minor things
- Do get involved in a local church
- Do moderate your expectations!
- Do serve and give to your church
